Manufacturers of a variety of products often distribute small samples of their products to potential customers. This is often accomplished by incorporating samples into advertisement pages which are then bound within publications such as magazines and catalogs. This is an especially popular method of advertising and promoting perfumes and cosmetics.
In these advertisement pages, the sample material is usually enclosed between two panels or flaps of paper which are typically formed from one continuous sheet by folding it over the sample material, which is located near the unbound edge of the sheet. Depending upon the design of the device, the consumer either lifts one of the panels or removes a perforated tear strip to expose or access the sample material.
The current practice is to make these advertisement pages narrower or smaller than the publication or magazine pages. This is a consequence of the way magazines are typically bound. When a magazine is first assembled, its untrimmed pages typically extend beyond the length and width of the finished magazine size. The excess on the top, side, and bottom of the magazine pages is then cut off to prepare the magazine. If the advertiser's sample, which is frequently situated at the outside edge of the advertisement, extends beyond the borders of the finished magazine page, the sample area may be breached by the page trimming process, or the unbound panel may become unintentionally detached from the magazine.
In order to avoid this consequence, advertisers manufacture advertisement pages to be smaller than the size of a normal magazine page. This results in a number of disadvantages. First, after paying for an entire page of advertising, the advertiser fails to use the maximum area of the page in creating the advertisement. Thus, the impact on the customer and the amount of information transmitted is reduced. Secondly, an advertiser spends a large amount of time and money designing an attractive and effective advertisement in which to deliver its sample material. Ideally, this advertisement should stand alone in the consumer's field of vision when the consumer looks at the page, in order to direct as much attention as possible to the advertising material and to encourage the consumer to try the sample material. However, with the current method of advertisement page construction, the border of the sample advertisement is surrounded by the magazine text or advertisement which appears on the subsequent page, and this lessens the impact of the advertiser's message on the consumer.
Another problem encountered in the construction of folded-sheet advertisement pages is that the equipment and process used to fold the page can have detrimental effects on the page. For example, a folding device can cause unsightly wrinkling or creasing of the page near the fold line. Furthermore, although it is desirable to position certain sample materials, such as fragrance samples, near the fold line, a sample material so positioned may be damaged by the folding device. If the sample material is a microencapsulated fragrance, some of the microcapsules may be crushed, resulting in unwanted premature release of the fragrance.
There are a number of sampler devices in the prior art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,188,236 to Sayers et al. discloses a z-shaped scent sampler for use in magazines. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 4,925,667 to Fellows et al. discloses a method of binding cosmetic samples to a substrate for use in magazine inserts and the like. In addition, U.S. Pat. No. 5,050,910 to Schechter et al. discloses a complex, multi-layered sampler device in which part of the device must be entirely removed from the publication before the material can be sampled.
The prior art does not disclose an advertisement page which may span the entire area of a publication page and which comprises a simple two-layer construction to contain sample material. Also, the prior art does not disclose an advertisement page which may be constructed by folding but avoids the unsightly appearance and damage to the sample material that folding can cause. Therefore, there is a need for an advertisement page bound within a publication having an edge which is flush with the outside edge of the publication pages and which thereby spans the entire area of the publication pages. There is also a need for a trimmable advertisement page which may be bound flush within a publication. There is also a need for an efficient and economical method of making such advertisement pages.